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Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck portrayed Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad and Justice League. Affleck is also the executive producer of Justice League and the upcoming film Sleeper and will also co-produced the upcoming The Batman. Significant roles *Fred O'Bannion in Dazed and Confused (1993) *Shannon Hamilton in Mallrats (1995) *Holden McNeil in Chasing Amy (1997) *Chuckie Sullivan in Good Will Hunting (1997) *Ned Alleyn in Shakespeare in Love (1998) *A.J. Frost in Armageddon (1998) *Bartleby in Dogma (1999) *Rudy Duncan in Reindeer Games (2000) *Holden McNeil/Himself in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) *Captain Raif McCawley in Pearl Harbor (2001) *Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears (2002) *Matt Murdock/Daredevil in Daredevil (2003) *Larry Gigli in Gigli (2003) *Ollie Trinke in Jersey Girl (2004) *Gawking Guy in Clerks II (2006) *George Reeves in Hollywoodland (2006) *Neil in He's Just Not That Into You (2009) *Stephen Collins in State of Play (2009) *Dean in Extract (2009) *Doug MacRay in The Town (2010) *Tony Mendez in Argo (2012) *Ivan Block in Runner, Runner (2013) *Nick Dunne in Gone Girl (2014) *Christian Wolff in The Accountant (2016) *Joe Coughlin in Live by Night (2016) Quotes *"It's so awesome, I'm so excited. They called me up and said 'do you want to do this', and I'm like, 'I'm not 25 man are you sure?'. So they said to come down and we'll show you what we're doing, and it was incredible. Zack has this incredible take on it..obviously we can't do what Christian did, those movies are amazing, so he wants to do something different but still in keeping with that." *"Initially I was reluctant as I felt I didn't fit the traditional mold, but once Zack showed me the concept, and that it would be both different from the great movies that Chris and Christian made but still in keeping with tradition I was excited. Doing something different and new is always tricky and part of the thrill and the risk is that initially it confounds expectations. The truth is, it's the movie and the execution of it is what all the actors depend on and I believe in Zack's vision." *"Yes, Kevin described portrayal of Batman aptly. I don't want to go further because I want to be able to capitalize on what is new about this iteration by having it be a surprise to the audience." *"I expected that reaction. Warner Bros. told me, 'You should know what you’re getting into.' They showed me the reactions to other folks who had been cast in these roles. They said this is how it tends to play out initially." *"When they asked if I would be Batman, I told them I don’t see myself in the role and I was going to have to beg off. They said I’d fit well into how they were going to approach the character and asked me to look at what the writer-director, Zack Snyder, was doing. The stuff was incredible." *"It was a unique take on Batman that was still consistent with the mythology. It made me excited. All of a sudden I had a reading of the character. When people see it, it will make more sense than it does now or even than it did to me initially. I don’t want to give away too much, but the idea for the new Batman is to redefine him in a way that doesn’t compete with the Bale and Chris Nolan Batman but still exists within the Batman canon. It will be an older and wiser version, particularly as he relates to Henry Cavill’s Superman character." *"I understand I’m at a disadvantage with the internet. If I thought the result would be another ''Daredevil, I’d be out there picketing myself. laughs Why would I make the movie if I didn’t think it was going to be good and that I can be good in it? The only movie I actually regret is Daredevil. It just kills me. I love that story, that character, and the fact that it got fricked up the way it did stays with me. Maybe that’s part of the motivation to do Batman." *"''Well, I don’t want to get too far afield and I’m sure I’ll have time to talk about Batman down the road. What I’ll say is that I really like Zack. From what I’ve seen of what’s Zack is doing, it’s made me very excited. One of the nice things about being an actor in that movie is they show you all the stuff before anyone else gets to see it. So all the sort of world-creation, and the take on the character and the other characters is really exciting. And at the end of the day, the truth is it’s really directors that make movies work or not — especially these kinds of movies, where it’s about the whole world, and a rising tide lifts all ships. And if it all has integrity, if it all has a sense of realism, then it works. And if it doesn’t, than it doesn’t really matter what everyone’s doing the screen because they just look like a bunch of Mexican wrestlers in suits." *"It wasn't either, really. I expected that reaction. Warner Bros. told me, "You should know what you're getting into." They showed me the reactions to other folks who had been cast in these roles. They said this is how it tends to play out initially." *"When they asked if I would be Batman, I told them I didn't see myself in the role and I was going to have to beg off. They said I'd fit well into how they were going to approach the character and asked me to look at what the writer-director, Zack Snyder, was doing. The stuff was incredible. It was a unique take on Batman that was still consistent with the mythology. It made me excited. All of a sudden I had a reading of the character. When people see it, it will make more sense than it does now or even than it did to me initially." *"I don't want to give away too much, but the idea for the new Batman is to redefine him in a way that doesn't compete with the Bale and Chris Nolan Batman but still exists within the Batman canon. It will be an older and wiser version, particularly as he relates to Henry Cavill's Superman character." *"I understand I'm at a disadvantage with the internet. If I thought the result would be another ''Daredevil, I'd be out there picketing myself. laughs Why would I make the movie if I didn't think it was going to be good and that I could be good in it?" *"''I sure am shooting. Well, I’m not on the set right now. We’re shooting nights and it’s before work, but I’m in Detroit." *"I can tell you that I’m very excited and it’s very exciting. I can tell you that in my entire career, I haven’t had so many people come up to me and say how much they’re looking forward to the movie. Naturally, that’s a lot of pressure, but I love the script, I love the director, I love the studio. I’m very much looking forward to it, but it’s two years away so it probably doesn’t bear talking about anymore." *"Probably the comicbook franchise, if only because Batman has been around since the 1930s and a fixed part of American culture. But, anytime you build a character when the audience has a firm belief on how it should be, like ''Fifty Shades or Star Wars… It can be an asset and a challenge. Anyone who did it would face that challenge. The truth is, it all melts away once people see the movie." *"''Well, I don’t know how the others have been. Anytime you have a costume that is restricting, the challenge is that it’s got to look good but not look restricting." *"Batman is basically the American version of Hamlet. We accept that he’s played by actors with different interpretations. Here, he's at the end of his run and maybe the end of his life. There’s this sort of world-weariness to it" *"The mocap suit is the most humiliating, ridiculous thing in the world. You can move freely, and they put it on digitally. It’s a little bit more humiliating to wear, but it’s easier for the digital effects guys. You can see who the priority is..." *"directing a solo Batman film Look, if I could make it work, yeah, obviously it would be like a dream. The trick is, as to any movie, is to make sure that you- if you’re going to direct it- that you can make it good. You’ve got to have the right idea and the right take on it. Broadly speaking, it’s something I’d be open to, for sure. It’s a very exciting idea." *"I think there is a ton of pressure on it. I mean I would be bulls**ting you to say there isn’t. You’ll see next year they are going to have a great year. They are now developing … probably the single greatest under-exploited IP asset in the entertainment business, the DC comic world. And now they have started to exploit that and you are going to see that blossom. And, when it does, it’s going to be massive." *"I was really impressed by that and by the intelligence of his Tsujihara's notes, and the fact that he cared. It was not like some guys, especially at that level, where it would be, ‘We need a franchise movie … we just need a movie with the names ‘Batman’ and ‘Superman’ on it and it doesn’t matter what it is. For him, that wasn’t it. He was willing to take longer to make the movie to get it right to make it a movie of higher quality." *"We are a very kind of instant gratification culture when it comes to analyzing the film business. And there is a lot of hyperbole involved. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of pressure on it. If it doesn’t do well, that will be extremely disappointing. I leave that to the experts to decide." *"I'm bound by nondisclosure clauses a mile long. It felt like I have such a cool cousin. This thing that is so awesome is somehow related to me, and that was really exciting because it started to feel like a constellation of things, and I’ve never had that feeling." *"He's a guy who had been through that experience already for many years and was kind of burnt out and asking himself what the point of it all was and going through an existential crisis." *"Batman is covered up by a suit and sometimes a car and sometimes a lot of vehicles and weapons, whereas Bruce Wayne is much more naked — it’s just you and a suit of clothes. You can’t really play Batman because Batman is different things to different people. We project our own things onto the mythology of what Batman is, and he has to be able to be projected upon. With Bruce Wayne, you have to bring something distinct and new and different." *"Sо it’s аbоut twо hеrоеs whо cаn bе sееn аs hеrоic аnd villаinоus, аnd whеn yоu lооk аt thе dоublе-еdgеd swоrd оf thаt, diffеrеnt pеоplе will cоmе аwаy lооking аt it vеry diffеrеntly. Rаthеr thаn just ''Аliеn Vs. Prеdаtоr, whеrе yоu hаvе twо mоnstеrs аnd thеy’rе gоnnа fight, yоu hаvе twо pеоplе whо rеаlly truly bеliеvе thеy аrе dоing sоmеthing hеrоic аnd nеcеssаry in thеir cоnﬂict." *"''Bаtmаn hаs sееn thе dеvаstаtiоn thаt cоmеs frоm аliеns hаuling оn Еаrth. Hе thinks Supеrmаn’s аttrаcting ﬂiеs tо оur plаnеt. Hе is bаsicаlly а bеаcоn..." *"Yeah, it's very different. It's a big movie too but it's another thing to spend three weeks in the Batmobile, following a guy with a green suit who pretends to be the bad guy! The superhero movies are magical but really difficult to turn, especially physically." *"After the success of ''Argo, I really felt I could do what I liked. But it took some convincing for me to take on Batman. Zack Snyder showed me around his studio, where there were lots of drawings and paintings, while the visual world of the film. I was very surprised, it had nothing to do with what I imagined. He wanted to be as close as possible to the comic book by Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns. With Batman older, more of a brawler who comes to the end of his career. A slightly off-side guy whose playboy philanthropist is actually another mask with which he fills the void that inhabits it. Loved this vision. This is not a guy of 25 who spends his anger on the criminals of Gotham City. This is someone who takes stock of his life and wondered if it was worth it all. He lived another tragedy, the people he worked with were killed by something that terrifies him. Yes, because suddenly the world is meaningless: Batman faces superhumans, which had never happened to him. It's very similar to what we saw at this time, at least since 2001. The world is much scarier than what we thought, anything can happen at anytime. Banks can flow, buildings can explode... You feel less safe and Zack wanted to evoke that feeling." *"Zack is an incredibly visual director. One thing that sometimes doesn't make sense will when it is turned on the monitor, it's sublime. It inspired me every day. And Chris is a pragmatic type who writes scripts for political thrillers. Their meeting was fruitful, they managed to create the perfect hybrid. This script is great, there was not a line to change in the dialogues. And I can tell you this is rare." *"''I think that was mainly realized they could be good! (laughs) Before it was a bit cynical: putting costumes on guys, use of licenses, and there will be public. And then they realized they could make crossovers and if they coped well, there was a lot more money to boot. At the time, nobody was trying to make a good movie. The DC Comics universe has a nice card to play today. There is room for DC, it's darker, and Marvel is lighter and a bit more fun. This has been in the DNA of these two companies for a long time, even before the films." *"Honestly, it's the physical side. Because other actors have given everything before the public's expectations about what a superhero should look like, which are virtually impossible to achieve. I had to build muscle for a year for this film, it was a crazy job. It is almost 70% of taff. It must be all the time thinking of his regimen, it occupies a wild place in your head. I'm not complaining, I accepted the job. On the other hand, I can not tell you how pleased I was to eat a burger when filming was over!" *"Each was great in its genre. I tried not to think about it and I followed the instructions of Zack. I thought that if we were successful, they would not even compare with what was done before. I saw the movie and I think the result speaks for itself." *"It is a result of ''Man of Steel, so I landed in the world of Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill. In fact, we did not share many scenes with Henry, it was a bit the night shift and the day shift! We crossed our costumes, like working in the same company but do not trailed so often together. On the other hand, when we were in the same sequences, there was something electricity." *"''Oh, so many! I totally took one of the batarangs. I put it in my pocket and they told me that I had earned it. The prop guy came to claim it and I told him no. I thought I had a sort of 'movie star pass' for this kind of thing. I stayed right in my boots and I flew me to Los Angeles! The guy was super pissed off: 'Let him go to hell Ben Affleck, which brings me the Batarang!' I've never visited. At the end of filming, Zack gave me a great gift, Batman's grapple gun. I was like a kid. Besides, it's fun, my son really thinks I'm Batman. And I do not know if these are the colors, but he is sure that the FedEx guy is the Joker. Whenever a package arrives, 'Daddy, the Joker is out!'" *"I've been a fan of Jeremy since high school, he's bluffing me completely. I knew it was going to ride with him alone and that I could rely on him to trigger real emotions in me. I hardly had to play, it came naturally. As for Jesse, his Lex Luthor is reminiscent of Kurt Cobain mixed with Larry Page, it's great. It makes me laugh that celebrates the uniqueness of our billionaires, let them do what they want by finding it quite charming. Without ever saying for a second that may be just great mentally ill!" *"Gal Gadot has operated the character of Wonder Woman on the screen and yet it is very difficult not to fall into the ridiculous. The border is extremely thin but she doing admirably well. The most impressive action sequences in the film are actually for her." *"I love this world and I like to participate. There I still have a few and I'm very excited about Justice League. I try not to think about it."'' *"''Theoretically yes, if the script is good, I am on it. But that is still far away for me, then I can only think the scene I'll turn Monday." *"I just improv’d that. I had a feeling that it would work and that it would be funny. I improvised and I talked to Zack about it and I think this will really work because you don’t expect it – and because it’s Batman, and at that moment he is so incredibly overmatched. We’ve taken these characters and are treating them more and more realistically. It seems very realistic that he would say that at that point. Any kid has heard their father say that if he’s trying to hammer a nail and hammers his thumb by accident. I think that, unfortunately, all kids are plenty exposed to that particular expression." *"One of the themes is ‘how far is it okay to go, preventatively, to stop someone who you think might be a threat to you in the future?’ And I think the more you go down that road, the darker it gets." *"I think what I would do, what I probably would do, is in some ways what Zack did with this movie, which is to borrow certain things from the great comic books, but create an original story around it because I wouldn't want the fans to already know the story and be familiar, but I would borrow, steal, great things that have been done before in the comics." *"Batman went to a very dark place that was rooted in this trauma occurred to the people that he loved and worked with and what he saw. This really is not about that issue for him so much anymore. He's no longer extreme in that way. From the experiences of the last movie, he sort of learns some things I think and now is ... I'm trying to say it without giving away any spoilers, but he's feeling like he's wanting to redeem himself and he's wanting mankind to be redeemed and he's wanting to make the world better, having learned lessons that were important in the last movie." *"DC movies are, I think, by their nature still a little bit more Gothic or more mythic rather than some comic book movies are, but ''Batman v Superman was a heavy, dark movie. It was really rooted in Dark Knight Returns, which is a heavy, dark book. This is not that. This is a step in evolution from that about bringing together all these characters, ones who had their origins and it's about multilateralism and it's about hope. It's about working together and the kind of conflicts that you have trying to work together with others. It's a world with all these other superheroes that exist." *"''I think they have a date for it. Although, I don’t know if I would necessarily be able to make that date because I don’t have a script that’s ready yet. So that’s my—my timetable is I’m not going to make a movie until there’s a script that I think is good because I’ve been on the end of the things when you make movies when you have a script that’s not good yet and it doesn’t pan out."I have a script, we’re still working on it, and I’m not happy enough with it yet to actually go out there and make a Batman movie, for which I have the highest of standards, I would say. That’s something that would have to pass a very high bar for me. It’s not just like, ‘Yeah, that might be fun, let’s go try this out.’''"'' *"That's interesting. There's an element of that to it. There's a quality to really what Ezra does that is young and fun and full of life, and excited about what they're doing that's so in contrast to who Batman is. There's a little bit of that natural yin and yang to playing scenes with him. There's not the ward aspect to it, but there's a little bit of the mentor -- which you'd probably ask Ezra and he'd be like, 'frick that! He's not my mentor!' But I think there is a little bit. And it's fun to play, definitely." *"Why I’m an executive producer is that I’m directing one of the movies. So there’s sort of this cross pollination of story and characters and I don’t want to give any of that stuff away, but it basically means that there are some things that might happen in my ''Batman that are affected by I mean, here we are in the police station in Gotham City. There’s a potential that something like this might exist in that story. So it’s a creative way that DC came up with of kind of being a filmmaker-driven company and entity and also making sure that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing and so that there’s collaboration and supervision. So that somebody doesn’t go sailing off, causing problems for your movie with their movie. You know, in a way, it’s also a kind of a courtesy. You know what they’re doing, one hand knows what the other is doing, and I get to weigh in on stuff that impacts the Batman stuff." *"''Movies are all about the director. I’ve learned that, finally. When you work with a director, you’re on his or her ship. You’re going in that direction. Your job is to be creative and bring forth your ideas, but to fulfill this person’s vision of how they’re telling the whole story. You have a silo that you’re responsible for in your performance. For me, it’s about getting as in tune with a director as possible. You’re making their movie… The nice thing about acting is that, if the set falls down, you can just go back to your trailer. Things are not my problem." *"There’s two suits in ''Justice League. One is the one that we’ve seen before, and then one that he augments because of the nature of the mission, which I can’t give away. But it was a chance for them to play with the suit and add elements to it and kind of tech it out, and I thought they did a really good job. It was really fun." *"''It's interesting: It was a huge hit movie -- more people went to see that than any movie I've made in my career. It was the biggest hit of my career and then it had so much editorial negativity. Fans went, and I got a lot of positive response. It was interesting, that movie, because it was judged not necessarily on execution so much as on its tone. People seemed to want to have a lighter tone to the movie, and I thought that was interesting. Tone is not a qualitative thing. It's subjective, right? Some tones resonate with me that might not with you. And the tone of the movie was really parallel to the Frank Miller book, which I liked and thought was great. I'm glad that so many people went and so many people liked the movie." *"The movie, I think, is going to be called ''The Batman. I think that's what we're going with now. I might change it. That's about it, that's all I got. We're working on the script, it's going well, I'm really excited about it, and I assure you, if anything develops, you'll hear about it." *"He’s a great villain because—I just had an instinctive feeling that he would match up with him well. You know, I’m a big admirer of that character as well, especially in the New 52 the way that they did Deathstroke, and I thought that it could work." *"''ou know, it's hard to say exactly what it is. I think the reaction spoke for itself. It just seems like a great counterpart to Batman. They're similar in terms of skillsets, they're similar in terms of tone, and he's never been utilised in a movie before which is really, really exciting." *"He's great and he's going to be great in the movie." *"I mentioned the other day… it’s been around for a long time, the movie… there is no Batman movie happening yet, we’re still trying to figure it out, you know, get the script and budget and all that stuff. And someone said, ‘what are you calling it?’ and I had said, like, back when we were promoting another movie, I was like ‘we don’t have a name for it, we’re just going with ''The Batman or Batman movie’, and I said that, and everyone was like ‘Affleck announces the title of his Batman movie.’''" *"Last night I spent time working on the script. I’m in full-on ‘trying to get it right mode’. It’s not the kind of movie that you can fail quietly at. You have to really be sure that I have something that I feel really confident about before we go forward." *''We still have to get a screenplay and get it together. I’m a real believer in not reverse engineering projects to meet a window or a date, but rather when you get the right story, the right idea, the right thing, then you make the movie. That’s what we’re doing, and I’m hoping to get that done. I’m spending a lot of time working on that, but also working on other stuff." *"''If I could, there’s nothing I’d love more than to direct a stand-alone iconic, great Batman movie. But it’s been done. Chris Nolan did three really great movies. I’m mindful of that. I’m not in any hurry to jam the mediocre movie down the pipe. I really want to make sure, if we do it, we get the great version and one that’s worthy of tradition of guys like Tim Burton, Chris Nolan, and Christian Bale." *"It was great, and there's a lot of changes and a lot of new stuff. There was a whole feeling of kind of 'rebirth' and there's an exciting group of actors. You know, Ezra Miller and Jason Momoa and guys like that, so much fun, and Gal Gadot who's great and Henry Cavill. It was a lot of fun." *"She's perfect for anything. She could do anything. Vicki Vale's kind of bitchy, I think she's better for...well, we won't say that." *"It taught me not to do interviews with Henry Cavill where I don’t say anything and they can lay Simon & Garfunkel tracks over it. That’s one thing I learned." *(Matt Reeves' Batman movie) "is something I’m contemplating. You don’t do it forever, so I want to find a graceful and cool way to segue out of it."How 'Justice League' weathered supersized setbacks to assemble DC's greatest heroes References Category:DC Extended Universe cast Category:Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice cast Category:Suicide Squad cast Category:Sleeper crew Category:DC Extended Universe crew Category:Justice League (film) crew Category:Writers Category:Producers Category:Justice League (film) cast